Many television viewers are often faced with the dilemma of wanting to watch multiple listings simultaneously for various reasons. For example, different members of a family may not want to watch the same show, or two desired shows may be aired in the same time slot. For sports fanatics, multiple games of interest may be played during overlapping periods of time. Increasingly, multiple sporting events are being televised on several channels owned by one parent company. Examples include the Summer Olympics which are televised by NBCUniversal Media LLC, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Men's Basketball Tournament televised by CBS Corporation. In both of the aforementioned examples, events and games are simultaneously broadcasted on numerous TV channels and websites associated with the respective companies.
In instances when there are just two conflicting shows, a viewer through a remote control can use the “previous channel” or “back” button to switch back and forth between channels. The switching may occur using various methods, such as during a commercial or after some time has elapsed. However, this methodology is not successful when there are three or more channels of interest.
Another option may include saving the desired channels to a “favorite's list” to allow one to either view the list of favorites to choose from or press the “fav” button to switch to the next channel (in ascending order) in the favorite's list to view. This manual process is predicated on someone remembering to change the channel occasionally.